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Doctors Health Press, a division of Lombardi Publishing Corporation, and publisher of various natural health newsletters, books, and reports, including the popular online Doctors Health Press e-Bulletin, is reporting on a new health breakthrough finding that mixing alcohol with a diet soft drink can result in a higher breath alcohol concentration than when alcohol is mixed with regular or sugar-sweetened drinks.

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Doctors Health Press, a division of Lombardi Publishing Corporation, and publisher of various natural health newsletters, books, and reports, including the popular online Doctors Health Press e-Bulletin, is reporting on a new health breakthrough finding that mixing alcohol with a diet soft drink can result in a higher breath alcohol concentration than when alcohol is mixed with regular or sugar-sweetened drinks.

As Doctors Health Press e-Bulletin (http://www.doctorshealthpress.com/general-health-2/alcohol-and-diet-drinks-a-potentially-toxic-combo) notes, breath alcohol concentration (BrAC) is influenced by several factors, including food. Eating food helps reduce BrAC, but mixing alcohol with diet soft drinks has just now been found to lead to a higher BrAC. Research on artificially sweetened drink mixers is quite new, but they suggest that a simple choice of mixer could be the factor that puts a person above or below the legal limit to drive, for instance. Here, researchers wanted to see if people noticed BrAC differences.

As the article “Alcohol and Diet Drinks: A Potentially Toxic Combo” reports, in three sessions, 16 people received one of three doses—1.97 mL/kg vodka mixed with 3.94 mL/kg Squirt, 1.97 mL/kg vodka mixed with 3.94 mL/kg diet Squirt, and a placebo beverage—in random order. The participants’ BrACs were recorded, and they rated their own intoxication, fatigue, impairment, and willingness to drive.

The Doctors Health Press e-Bulletin article states that researchers saw that alcohol and the diet mixer led to higher BrACs. People were unaware of this difference, though their impairment was worse because of it.

As the article explains, using a diet mixer leads to a higher BrAC because the stomach seems to treat sugar-sweetened beverages like food, which delays the stomach from emptying. But drinks without sugar don’t fool the stomach, and the body absorbs alcohol unimpeded.